Large IDE drives not compatable with old systems

Hi Franc, thanks for the HDAT2 suggestion, that certainly is an interesting set of tools!

I tried setting the Max size to 40G and 80G, but the 2480 still does the same thing. (PC BIOS reports 40/80G drive size). I also tried Clonezilla to clone the working 40G drive to the new one but again the 2480 does the same thing. I also tried formatting in Windows and all combinations of all the above - again same result.

The 2480 always sees an unformatted drive, and on formatting always creates

I notice HDAT2 shows a gazillion drive parameters and settings, most of which I don't have a clue about. Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks a million everyone, this is a bit of an education.

Gareth.

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Have you considered using a solid-state disk? There are IDE adapters that take CF memory cards, it could be a simple matter to replace the old drive with something very quiet indeed. Something that won't every become noisy.

Only problem is I/O speed. I don't have enough experience with SSD other than what's in my netbook. But I'm thinking the data throughput may be insufficient for a large number of tracks with a lot going on. And they are expensive also. Nearest thing i could find was a 40 gig Intel SATA II SSD.

In article , Gareth Magennis writes

It's probably because you are trying to use a drive that is too large for the Roland's firmware to cope with. There is an addressing limit of

Try and get hold of a 120GB or smaller drive. My bet is that it'll then work.

You can. Ebay is your friend. I've just bought three 120Gb drives for a specific project with a capacity limitation similar to yours. They all work fine.

e.g. fleabay 250720202527

On Sat, 6 Nov 2010 19:22:23 -0000, "Gareth Magennis" put finger to keyboard and composed:

In your OP you state that a "physical format" requires 8 hours. I presume this is a full zero-fill of the drive.

If so, then the average data transfer rate would be ...

FWIW, that's much slower than the slowest of the PIO or DMA modes:

Does your new drive, when truncated to 40GB, complete a physical format in less time?

- Franc Zabkar

On Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:13:55 +1100, Franc Zabkar put finger to keyboard and composed:

Sorry, your new drive is 160GB, so the speed would be 4x, ie 5.56 MB/s. Furthermore, the data rate may be include read-after-write verification, so the write speed may be double that figure.

If you repeat the physical format on your 160GB drive after truncating it to 40GB, and if the operation then requires only 2 hours or less, then this would suggest that the drive is seeing the full user area. If the time is reduced to about one third, then this may indicate that the Roland is seeing only the first 128GiB. I'm not sure that this would bring you any closer to a resolution, though.

- Franc Zabkar

I don't think that would be a problem, but not being at all familiar with audio equipment, so I could be wrong. There's CF out there that supports

The 2480 can either do a "quick format" or a physical format. Its the physical format that takes 8 hours, then fails, the quick one takes maybe 30 secs to create the 4 partitions, then fails. I haven't tried a physical format on the truncated drive.

I spent a long time playing with the HDAT2 program you pointed me to, thanks. Tried many/all things. There is a function to change the max LBA, and also to change the number of bits it uses, but unfortunatley none of these changes are valid!

Changing drive size works fine though, but as another poster pointed out, it looks like it may be the LBA bit size that is the problem.

Anyway I have learnt a lot about IDE drives now, and have found a new 80G WD drive online which I have ordered, as I have now given up!!

Thanks to everyone, I am now much the wiser. (anyone interested, download HDAT2 and have a play!!)

Gareth.